[SPOILER]'s Death Was Foreshadowed in 'Yellowjackets' Season 1

Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Yellowjackets.When there were still a few episodes left of YellowjacketsSeason 2, the showrunners revealed two Season 1 moments that were going to pay off in the show’s second season. The first of the two was an off-hand comment from Natalie (Sophie Thatcher) to Travis (Kevin Alves) about the deck of cards he had not having any Queens. We know now this was foreshadowing the team using said deck of cards and its single Queen to choose a sacrifice. The other foreshadowed moment was all the way back in the pilot, and once you notice it you realize just how fated each of these characters were from the start.

RELATED: 'Yellowjackets' Season 2 Finale: Christina Ricci Confirms Why Misty's Been Loyal to Natalie

Natalie and Misty's Fates Were Entwined From the Beginning

The moment in question takes place towards the end of the pilot episode when Natalie is high and begins hallucinating everything from Lottie (Courtney Eaton) wearing a pilgrim hat to the distorted faces of her friends. But she also sees Misty (Sammi Hanratty) across the way, bathed in neon light looking small and alone. Just like the foreshadowing of the cards, this moment feels like nothing but hallucinogenic weirdness, Natalie isn’t even sure if she really did see Misty. But come the Season 2 finale, suddenly that moment is larger than life and has so many underlying meanings.

With Lisa (Nicole Maines) having overheard the women’s conversation, she is in near hysterics, confused and scared, and begging for answers. All the while pointing a gun at Natalie (Juliette Lewis), which puts Misty (Christina Ricci) on edge and she reveals a syringe behind her back and begins to sneak up behind Lisa. Natalie notices her though and has a series of moments flood back to her, one of which is when she told Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) she let Javi (Luciano Leroux) die in her place. Determined not to let that happen again, especially to someone she’s grown such a deep connection with, she jumps in front of Lisa and takes Misty’s syringe to the chest, killing her almost instantly.

The moment that was foreshadowed follows in the aftermath when the medics have loaded Natalie’s body into an ambulance, and we get a shot of Misty standing small and alone, once again bathed in neon light — only this time it’s from the light of sirens and blearing headlights. And to top it all off, during the flashbacks right before she jumped in front of Lisa, that shot of teenage Misty was one of the moments that flashed in her mind, as if some sort of deja vu moment. This show has been twisted and dark from the get-go, and looking back on early episodes with the information we have now thanks to Season 2 offers up a much more nuanced look into these characters and their ultimate story.

Is There a Deeper Meaning to This Moment?

Like the deck of cards foreshadowing, this moment feels slightly vague as well, but when you look at it through a lens of the entire series thus far, there’s so much nuance. This isn’t just a clever nod to an earlier scene, this is a nod to the entire journey we would see Natalie and Misty go on together. Misty has always been on the sidelines of the Yellowjackets — she isn’t on the team as a player, she’s their equipment manager (though at times she acts more like a personal cheerleader). That continues well into the wilderness timeline and even as an adult. The women consistently ignore her phone calls, and yet she’s always the first person they call when they’re in crisis. But while Natalie was certainly just as guilty of this, she did build a genuine relationship with Misty over the course of Season 1 (whether she wants to admit it or not). Sure, she’s completely abrasive and sometimes downright rude, but you can tell that she has a soft spot for Misty and enjoys having someone around who sees her as more than just a lost cause. So for Natalie to die at her hands was a really cruel twist of fate.

The moment Natalie sees Misty at the party — whether she’s a hallucination or not, feels like a nod to how important Misty would eventually become to her, and how detrimental she would become. So much criticism has come from this death, with fans saying it’s out of the blue and pure-shock value, but that’s just simply not true. The showrunners have had a five-season plan from the very beginning, and in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, director and EP Karyn Kusama (who directed both the pilot and Season 2 finale) spoke about Natalie’s death, saying: “Something I know the showrunners had always thought about, and that Ashley and Bart had always thought about from the pilot, was that mysterious moment when Natalie hallucinates Misty at the kegger in the woods. That was always this time-defying flash-forward to the notion that Misty was always going to be kind of an angel of death for Natalie.”

Showrunner Bart Nickerson added to this notion on “Behind The Buzz” saying: “As upsetting as it always is to lose a character who is as important to our story as Natalie, the fact is that the stakes of the world are life and death. The ritual itself awakens something in them that had been dormant for a really long time. What we’re trying to do with the present-day story is to show that that force is not one that ends when they get rescued.” In the same featurette, Christina Ricci chimed in to talk about Misty and Natalie’s relationship: “Misty’s obsessed with Natalie. It’s the closest she’s come to having a friend, she’s not about to let that go — even if she ends up holding her so tight she crushes her.”

Honestly, that might just be the perfect description of Natalie and Misty’s relationship thus far. It was suffocating yet gentle, and harmless until it was fatal. Though their story may not have had the happiest of endings, and Misty may have unknowingly been Natalie’s angel of death, the time the pair did share together, and the genuine care Misty had for her, will remain one of the best pieces of Yellowjackets.